Cellular mobile telephone systems operate by dividing geographic areas into cells. The network is configured so that interference between the cells is minimized. Groups of cells are serviced by assigned base stations to act as the radio interface between mobile telephones within the cells communicating with other telephones within or outside of their own cell. When a mobile telephone within a particular cell places a "call," it does so by sending a message to the Base Station assigned to its cell by identifying which telephone (or network server) it wishes to communicate with. The Base Station can communicate the message to a Mobile Network for firer communication to another Base Station (to connect the caller to the desired other telephone), or can communicate the message to an appropriate Network Server (to connect the caller to some type of Network service).
Several factors can affect the size and type of the cells that the Base Stations service. A common occurrence is the dramatic enlargement of the density of mobile telephones within a particular cell such that the capacity of a Base Station servicing the cell becomes overly taxed. In such cases, the cell can be subdivided and additional Base Stations can be added to service the smaller geographic cell areas. Today, for example, a Mobile Telephony Network may employ 3000 Base Station sites, with annual expansion of 500 new Base Station sites being realistic. Other changes can also affect the cell servicing. For example, newer and improved Base Station technologies are being developed, which may be desirable for a particular cell location. In such cases, the replacement of an existing Base Station in a cell area with the improved design may occur.
When such changes occur in the Base Stations servicing a particular cell, the Base Station must be configured to perform the tasks common to cells in general and unique to the cells that the Base Station is servicing. This configuration process usually employs the identification of the systems used by the new Base Station and the customization of those systems to the particular application. One such system is the Operation and Support System, which as used in this disclosure, means an application for certain operation and maintenance functions that can exist both on an element level (to manage a single network element such as a Base Station) and on a Network level (to manage a whole telephony network). The term Element Management refers to the operation and management of a single network element and the term Network Management refers to the operation and management of an entire network. Typical Element Management activities relevant to the present invention include (without limitation) installation, commissioning, hardware supervision, and software supervision of a single network element. Typical network management activities include (without limitation), setting up message routing information, supervising network performance, collecting accounting information, etc.
Whenever a Base Station is added into traffic service, or when hardware is added to, changed, or removed from an existing Base Station, the modification will by necessity require some type of reconfiguration in the Mobile Network that uses the existing Base Station. The cost (for e.g., introducing a new Base Station into a cell that is currently operating too close to the Base Station's capacity), is primarily in cell planning, site establishment, hardware establishment, and Mobile Network reconfiguration. The present invention addresses the last of these costs, Network reconfiguration, regardless of the impetus for the reconfiguration.
Currently, Network reconfigurations are performed manually. First, a new base station is installed. Then, Network (cell) planning occurs to determine the capacity of the installed hardware. (Note that a base station of any capacity can be installed anywhere and the network can then be configured to make the best use of it in the network). A Network Operator manually preconfigures the Mobile Network to accept and use the new Base Station or Base Station equipment. The Operator then informs the Base Station installation team which preconfiguration details are used so the team can introduce them to the element manager at the Base Station site. Because Base Station technology evolves, the types of Base Station equipment, the types of preconfigurations, the types of hardware and software, the upgrade characteristics, etc. of the thousands of Base Stations employed in an entire Mobile Telephony Network simply cannot realistically be made uniform. We expect that different types of Base Stations and different types of Base Station equipment will be employed throughout a Mobile Telephone Network. Thus, administration (and preconfiguration) of many different kinds of Base Stations and Base Station equipment cannot be avoided. But, currently, the preconfiguration of these many different types of hardware must be performed both at the element management level and at the network management level, which introduces additional costs, and which introduces the possibility that the information loaded into these two different management levels (one by the network operator and the other by the installation team) is not consistent due, for example, to human operator input errors.